A standard Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), such as a SIM card, is a mobile telephone secure element defined in the ETSI TS 102 221 standard. It is customized by a telephone operator before being used by a subscriber. Embedded UICC (eUICC), or more generally embedded Secure Elements (eSE), are embedded in mobile telephone terminals and can contain a plurality of customized profiles, possibly for different operators.
eUICC or eSE proprietors are able to manage the eUICC or eSE of their subscribers remotely using a secure routing unit of a subscription management server (Subscription Manager-Secure Routing (SM-SR) server) included in the infrastructure of the mobile network. This remote management enables loading of data into the card or the element, for example, or changing of the mobile network and therefore of the mobile network operator.
According to the GSMA 12FAST.15 standard currently being drawn up, this remote management requires that the eUICC or eSE send notifications to the SM-SR server. These notifications can be sent using the short message service (SMS), hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPs), which is faster, or CAT-TP (faster).
For example, these notifications can confirm that the terminal is connected to the mobile network or that, because of a lack of coverage, the eUICC or eSE has switched to a profile other than the current profile, for example to a default profile.
According to this standard, a subscriber profile in an eUICC or an eSE is the combination of a structure comprising files, data and applications that enable the eUICC or eSE, when these elements are present, to access a particular mobile network infrastructure, notably that of a mobile network operator. A subscriber profile is thus specific to a mobile network operator in that it allows access only to the corresponding particular infrastructure. For example, the profile can include information on the entities of the infrastructure to be contacted, connection keys, etc. For example, an eUICC or an eSE can have two profiles associated with two different mobile operators, enabling access to different infrastructures. These profiles are managed by the issuer security domain-root (ISD-R of the GlobalPlatform standard) of the card, itself controlled by the mobile operator (the issuer).
To send a notification as referred to above, the eUICC or eSE must notably recover status data collected on the current profile, connection parameters and a destination address of the notification, i.e. the address of the SM-SR server that collects this information. In the case of a notification sent by SMS, the address of the SM-SR server is a unique international telephone number, i.e. one consisting of a country code allowing worldwide access to the SM-SR server (of the type +44 in the United Kingdom) and a telephone number within that country.
According to the same standard, the address of the SM-SR server is memorized in the eUICC or eSE by the proprietor of the SM-SR server using a particular command sent by the SM-SR server to the eUICC or eSE of the subscribers. This command “UpdateSMSRAdressingParameters” as defined in section 4.1.1.10 of the current version of the standard is sent to the ISD-R of the eUICC or eSE making it possible to update said address of the SM-SR server if necessary.
According to the standard as currently formulated, the SM-SR server should have an address (a unique international telephone number) that is unique for all the profiles and therefore accessible from all the mobile operators.
This situation of the standard is not satisfactory, however.
On the one hand, it is relatively difficult to use a unique international telephone number for all operators in all countries. In fact, in some cases, the networks filter binary SMS (SMS MO) coming from terminals. In this case one solution is to connect the SM-SR server to the short message service (SMS-C) server of each operator. However, access to the SM-SR server then no longer uses a unique telephone number.
On the other hand, a difficulty arises if the SM-SR server is changed and a new address is therefore allocated. Updating the eUICCs or eSEs then constitutes a heavy workload for the new SM-SR server, given the large number of subscribers impacted by this change.
Finally, the use of this kind of unique international telephone number type address does not enable easy processing of the notifications according to the operators. Moreover, it does not guarantee confidentiality of service notifications that an operator can trigger on the eUICCs or eSEs of its subscribers, because all the operators can manipulate the messages sent to a universal address.
In this context, the present invention aims to resolve some or all of these drawbacks.